Off the CUPF: Community Use of Public Facilities

This Is How We Do It: CUPF Preparation for a County Budget Hearing | The Community Use Experience

• Derek Ross and Ramona Bell-Pearson • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Have you ever wondered how offices such as CUPF prepare for a budget hearing? In this podcast, CUPF's Communications and Outreach Specialist, Derek Ross, will discuss with our Director, Ramona Bell-Pearson and Financial Administrator, Vanessa Lopez-Cuevas their roles in the budget hearing process and the preparation that goes into our presentation. 

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Ramona:

Welcome to Off the CUPF a Community Use of Public Facilities podcast. We are one of many county government podcasts that focus on sustainability and innovation, all while making sure our community is aware of the services the county provides. Are you looking to reserve an outdoor indoor facility at a library, school or county building? How about the Silver Spring Civic Building at Veterans Plaza or the Clarksburg Cottage in Montgomery County, Maryland? Available venues are here to be reserved and we are the office that can make it happen. We are CUPF and thank you for joining our community podcast.

Derek:

Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back. Once again, my name is Derek, Derek Ross. And we are ready to get this podcast started. Hello, Ramona.

Ramona:

Hi, Derek

Derek:

You know we how we jump into it. Well, let's jump into some highs and lows. Director. Director Ramona Bell-Pearson. You got any highs and lows?

Ramona:

I do. I have a few But I'm just going to concentrate on one high and one low. Right now we're right in the middle of budget season and a lot of people know what that means. A lot of people don't. But, I think most people can figure it out, because we just left tax season, or some of us are still in it if you got an extension. So, I will say my high is when our budget, our department budget, is approved, which won't be until the middle, towards the end of next month.

Ramona:

My low is also budget related because during this process of getting our budget reviewed by the executive and then pushed over to the council, I've had to look very closely at the numbers of our operating expenses, et cetera, and it's a lot of money. We are a business, we're an enterprise fund, so we, if we don't raise it through our fees, we don't have the money. We're not like a tax appropriated agency. So looking at the quarterly reports and the full year reports, there's a lot of money. But thank you to our community. They continue to support us so that we are able to make our budget, and we're pushing again this year. We do need some additional support, which I think we've talked about in other podcasts related to our fee increase that we're trying to get approved. But that's my low.

Derek:

Wow, wow. See, I like how you keep it so professional, so business oriented. I'm thinking over here about my highs and lows. I was like you know what. You know, Montgomery Cou nty is a really strong county when it comes to like running 5Ks. There's so many groups and mentally I was ready to try to run a race and get back into it.

Ramona:

Was?

Derek:

Physically, physically. There's another question going on. Right now my right knee is saying you can do it if you want, but I got a present for you later on when you're done. So I'm like you know, I'm just trying to figure that out. But that's from a personal, from a work aspect of it. You know, low is, there's a lot that I want to do from a comms, if I don't tell people enough. I'm working on the communications, the outreach. So there's a lot to get done when it comes to outreach and just networking with the community, because it's very important that we understand what the community wants, and we just want to meet everybody at a good point, you know, a good point in life. Everybody's happy, we're smiling.

Ramona:

I heard that yo u have an annual report coming that's going to b e the bomb.

Derek:

We have so many eyes on it. So much creative juice. It's just so much flowing. It's just good energy. Ramona's on it, Vanessa's dropping some good knowledge on it too. We have charts and graphs and numbers. You're going to love it. I hope you do. I hope you do. But, Ramona, you know, last podcast we had Vanessa. I don't know if people remember who Vanessa is, but you know Vanessa comes with the numbers, the finance. Vanessa, that was her first podcast. If you notice, I'm talking about it as if Vanessa's not here, and Vanessa's actually here with us. Well, well, well, Vanessa, Vanessa, Ramona, is there anything else you would like to say? I know you introduced Vanessa before. Is there something new you want to say about Vanessa? Else, like you would like to say, I know you introduced vanessa before. Is there something you found out?

Ramona:

to say about vanessa something you found out. Vanessa's just knee deep in the numbers and she always makes us look good in terms of many, making sure that we have what we need and that we are being fair to our community. So I think that that's enough said. Hello, Vanessa.

Vanessa:

Hello, I'm glad to be back and I'm grateful Wow.

Derek:

Wow, we just got straight to it. So let's get into it. Let's get into it, let's kind of go through this. I know last episode, the last podcast we discussed, vanessa was here too. We were talking about the simplified fee structure. We were going into the breakdown. We call it like a series one because we're going to have a couple more series. Hopefully Vanessa is going to join us a little bit more, sounds like it, I hope so. You know, kind of put that in her lap a little bit Wink, wink. Anyway, the whole point is let's get into it To all our listeners. Here's a question for you. Did you know, or are you familiar with Montgomery County government budget hearings? And just in case you didn't know, that this episode is kind of talking about preparation for a county budget hearing. This is how we do it. This is how CUPF does it. Ramona, how do we do it?

Ramona:

I thought you knew, derek you know what, though you didn't ask vanessa her highs and lows, I had to sweat through that what?

Vanessa:

oh wow, I was like, I got through it. I was like that's you know what, Ramona?

Derek:

thank you so much. I well, vanessa said grateful. I was like I guess that that was. I think we good. Now, vanessa, I I am so sorry about taking your grateful and just running with it. Please tell us.

Vanessa:

I was okay with it.

Derek:

But since you mentioned it okay. Thank you for moment.

Vanessa:

So my highs, I would say, it's that spring break is over and my son is back in school.

Vanessa:

You know, I love my son but it's nice for there to be structure. So I'm happy that spring break is over and my lows is just the year end. We're approximating year end. Our fiscal year end is. June 30 is the last day of the budget year, so between now and June 30, it's going to be tight. Our budget is very tight, but we have some year end closeouts that we have to do and it's it's not not pleasing to see all this money come out and I'm like is this money coming back in, you know? So, yeah, that's that's my highs and lows. Thank you for making sure that I put it in there.

Derek:

Yes, yes, anytime. I'm so sorry, thank you for that. As soon as Ramona looked at me, I was like you know, I probably forgot something Showing up there. It was there, it was. Thank you, vanessa. Thank you, vanessa. I was so quick to get into it because I was thinking about music and then putting down. This is how we do it. And then I looked at Ramona. I was like wondering how do we do it? How does CUF get prepared for a budget hearing? What do we do?

Ramona:

Well, it's a complicated process, but it's sort of like making sausage you don't really want to see it, but you like the sausage at the end. Oh, okay, all right. No, actually it's pretty standard. Every department goes through this. You are given the opportunity to meet with the Office of Management and Budget during the fall season and that leads up to December when you get to a solidified budget that goes to the county executive. The county executive hears the recommendations of OMB. Those recommendations are made after meetings with the department representatives and then the executive makes his decision as to what he will agree to. That will become the final budget for the executive, which will go over to county council. That date is March 15th when it's presented to the council and it's the county executive's recommended budget operating budget to the county council. So it's the county executive's recommended budget operating budget to the county council. So it's for every department, it's not just CUPF, it's for every department in the county.

Ramona:

And the council then begins to have its review of the process. Its review of the process includes public hearings, it includes committee work sessions and those are followed by full council session, and all of this takes place between March and May and then there is a decision made in a final vote, that is, individual votes for each department, and those votes then by the full council become the final operating budget for the departments. Now I will say there is throughout the year and sometimes it happens right after the budget's approved where they go back and take another look because they hear from the state or the feds that they're not going to get the money for certain programs that they thought they were going to get. So it becomes necessary to make changes to the already approved budget. So there's still sometimes some you know adjustments that go on, but for the most part it's the final budget in May and then the departments begin to adjust for their coming fiscal year that starts July 1st, so that they can use that budget throughout the year.

Derek:

Wow, ok, ok. So we got the breakdown All right. So we got the breakdown from Director Ramona Bell-Pearson Just throwing that out there again. So, Ramona, I know we had some questions down, had like goals during the hearing, who's involved in the hearing and community involvement support. You've brought up a lot of that already and my question is kind of getting to the whole discussion is I wonder, what does the director do? How do directors get prepared for hearings? Because I've seen you on TV. I would love to know from each standpoint, like, how do y'all get prepared? You got the finance team, you got the director over here. I just it boggles my mind when I see y'all on TV, when I see y'all on TV and I'm just like I wonder how they got prepared for that.

Ramona:

Well, I think it's a partnership. Yeah, because we have meetings with our OMB analyst, we have meetings with the legislative staff for the council. We get questions from the council that give us an opportunity to understand what they're thinking, how we got to the numbers we got to, or why we're suggesting the programming or services that we're suggesting or operational needs that we have, and then we're kind of able to be a little prepared or anticipate what they're going to talk to us about because of those questions and the answers to those questions.

Vanessa:

Yeah, I do want to mention. Yeah, you know, when we get the questions from county council, we definitely know where their mind is. And then also, since we are trying to implement this fee increase for FY26, this year's questions were much more involved, so we had maybe like triple, the quadruple the questions this year. So we we had a nice time figuring out those questions, those responses, and we actually just forwarded those responses to the county council. You know it has to be. We give the questions to our OMB analysts. We meet with our OMB analysts as well, too, to make sure we're all on the same page and that we are, you know, collaborating in our responses. And I think that, you know, after this is over I think it's very it's like we'll relax for a few weeks before we start the budget again for the next year, but I think that it's very involved. There's a lot of different components that goes into the budget every single year.

Derek:

That is, and it's a lot of work. Kudos to y'all. I mean, if we don't say it enough, y'all are doing some mighty strong work right there. That's a lot of good work and I want to make sure that we understand that as a community and also as staff and coworkers, and just being able to witness awesomeness going on at the same time. I know Ramona was talking about the goals during the hearing. Who's involved and I know the questions I kind of have with you is your experiences leading up to the budget hearing and what is presented. Is there anything specific that you can kind of elaborate on about your experience from the finance team aspect of it?

Vanessa:

You know, for our budget hearings a lot of times we have to. Well, the questions that are given to us by council are incorporated into the packet and a lot of the questions are just financially related. They want to know the numbers in past years, they want to know our trends, they want to know where we see ourselves in the future. So what's interesting is that after the pandemic, prior to the pandemic I'll start there. Prior to the pandemic, we were very healthy with our fund balance. We were earning, I think, over a million dollars every month. But that was also. We had a healthy enterprise fund. But that was also redistributed to other projects for the community. We redid the floors at the EOB auditorium, the carpeting, we bought furniture for the rec facilities. We also another year we did the Silver Spring Civic building's hardwood floors.

Vanessa:

So we always took the money that we had in excess over the 10% reserve and we were able to incorporate it back into the different facilities the county has. But now, after the pandemic, we've seen that we don't have those resources anymore. Our enterprise fund last year in FY24 ended with 11% of our resources. So we still met the 10% mark. But for the second quarter of FY25, based on the projections, we were at 2.4% of our mandatory reserve, so we weren't not even close to the 10%. So that's something that was. You know, it was plain to see when we started doing the questions for the county council that the money that we've been receiving is not enough to cover our expenses, so so that's something that it was like in a lot of the questions. You could see that the money wasn't back to pre-pandemic levels and, you know, hopefully I didn't give too much information, but, yeah, that's something that went into this year's budget when we were answering questions. Thank you.

Derek:

Vanessa. No, no, you're fine, you can keep going if you want. We got about five hours. No, we do not.

Derek:

So, as we continue to finish this up and talk about so many things, especially in regards to this, is how we do it in regards to preparing for the county budget here. I don't know why I'm saying it like that. I must have a song in my head or something like that. But as we close it out, to confirm from Ramona's, take on it, we are working on our annual report. It will be printed, it will be in publication. We will make sure it gets shared and put in facilities. The goal is to make sure we incorporated a lot of the information from reports from various managers and everything like that is being looked over plenty of times. Best believe, you don't want me to just look at it. My eyes will see what my eyes are going to see, but it's always helpful to be able to work and collaborate with so many different people in our department. So many awesome people Once again shout out to the publication team, shout out to finance child care, core services, silver Spring Civic Building.

Derek:

There are so many different groups, so many managers, so many people that are making this happen. So thank you, thank you. Thank you, ramon, I know. Last time we did a shout out to the finance team. Should we do a shout out again, or should we just shout out? Do you have somebody else you want to? Not to take anything away from the finance team.

Ramona:

I don't know. I'm thinking maybe the entire staff, because everybody's been dealing with the whole budget issues and stressing about how we're doing and making sure that the permits are up to standard and making sure that the community is able to get as much access as possible, which, of course, benefits us too, because it gives us more permits, which gives us more fees. So I think the whole staff maybe could get a kudos.

Derek:

Oh, whole staff, all staff. What about you, vanessa, any close outs? Did you want to give a shout out?

Vanessa:

OK, I did want to say thank you to Ramona for her support. I know that she's very involved in assisting and trying to get our budget together. So thank you to Ramona. She always has great words to make our responses even better. Also, thank you to the finance team. They're very supportive and they do a lot of work. And also thank you, as Ramona mentioned, to the rest of our staff too, because without them there would be no budget. And then also the customers Customers you're the reason that we're here, you're the reason that we're. We still have jobs and we're still employed, and you know we do our best to to make sure that our customers are happy and are able to have all the resources that they need and be able to use the facilities, and try to try to make it as seamless as possible for them to rent out our space. So thank you to them as well thank you, thank you so much.

Derek:

And if I didn't, I don't think we mentioned it.

Vanessa:

So our timeline oh, and thank you to derek. I apologize. Thank you to derek, to the communications team.

Derek:

Thank you, good point vanessa I like that just threw me in, and I I appreciate it, though. So, last thing, is there a date? What is our date for our budget hearing? April 30th, april 30th, I don't want to forget. Well, I could have just said it, but I was like you know what I felt, like it's different when the director says it yes, april 30th. So be on the lookout. We're going to keep doing what we're doing for the community, because this is what we're here for. But thank you again, everybody, and see you next time.

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